


you said the sun would rise - let's go

by joonswig



Category: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018)
Genre: Anarchy, Guerrilla Warfare, M/M, Philosophy, also anarchists and guerilla fighters, but theyre also like. freedom fighters bro, colins like damn might as well, made friends with the thesaurus on this one, stefan is like heart eyes emoji, theyre in a completely different setting this has nothing to do with bandersnatch, theyre just. russians?, theyre like. in love bro, this is set in like. modern times i guess. so heavy homophobia (mentions) since we're in russia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 10:21:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19083073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joonswig/pseuds/joonswig
Summary: Colin talks of Marxism with such dexterity that he could announce Karl called heterosexuals the lumpenproletariat and Stefan would applaud him. Self-assured, twirling the toothpick with his fingers as though it were a cigar, Colin looks like the kind of person who knows anything about everything.





	you said the sun would rise - let's go

**Author's Note:**

> uh yeah thats kind of heavy i guess anyways they are NOT communists keep that in mind this is NOT promoting communism bcoz i personally dont like communism and love not promoting it bcoz it is bad. theyre just anarchists living a simple life. als o do not promote guerilla warfare. its also bad. this is a parody. this has to be said. please obey the law

Colin is the type to think he’s smart because he read approximately three Marx essays from before the Communist Manifesto. He’s tried reading _The Capita_ l as far as Stefan is aware, but none of his attempts proved successful. Still, Colin talks of Marxism with such dexterity that he could announce Karl called heterosexuals the lumpenproletariat and Stefan would applaud him. Self-assured, twirling the toothpick with his fingers as though it were a cigar, Colin looks like the kind of person who knows anything about everything. 

 

“Look, so, Orwell,” he likes throwing surnames around, Stefan notices. “He’s got this idée fixe with fertility.”

 

“Right.”

 

“Fuck that shit. You know how you escape 101?”

 

“How?”

 

“You die, that’s what you do.”

 

“Shut up, did MCR disband again?”

 

“Fuck you.”

 

Stefan likes it when Colin smiles, eyes lidded slightly, but still focused on him. It’s not wide, not how Colin laughs when someone calls Soviet Russia communist, a bit subdued. It’s mirth with hints of disbelief, Stefan guesses, the thought of someone countering his logorrhoea midway. He knows Colin enjoys the banter, enjoys his logic being challenged. 

 

He continues to amuse him, “you have to live to fight, y’know?”

 

“Has anyone ever told you how painfully utilitarian you are?” Colin says like Stefan is supposed to cower in embarrassment at the notion. “Shove the Gorky up your ass, will you?”

 

“Gorky ain’t half bad.”

 

“You’re right, he isn’t. You’re Dickens.”

 

“Now, that’s just cruel.”

 

Colin laughs, head thrown back, holding his leg up to his chest. His combat boots are mud-stained, as the younger refuses to put any effort in cleaning them up in the slightest. The sole, ripped from the shoe in at least three places, is glued back up half-assedly, clearly for convenience’s sake. 

 

“If we’re all dying, who’s gonna fight?” Stefan questions, making Colin hum softly.

 

“Still us. I’m not saying we pull a Werther, that’s just repugnant,” Colin continues the captious discourse. “I say we fight and die in our fight.”

 

“What are we fighting for if we won’t be seeing it, anyways.”

 

“I’m a pessimist, you know,” Colin diverges, “that primitivism of yours, I like it. Ideologically, it’s coherent as it gets, but we’re stuck in that impervious Moloch of a civilisation. Giving it up, trying to get others to give it up…it’s onerous, if not unattainable.”

 

Colin doesn’t carry on, fuliginous hands preoccupied with stuffing the kerosene-soaked cloths into the bottles. They’re filled three part petrol to one part motor oil and bleach to top off.

 

“Unless,” he resumes his train of thought, “unless you convince people giving up progress is what they want. But that’s just so terribly unscrupulous, I mean, no one wants to fuck trees till they die.”

 

“Primitivism isn’t fucking trees, asshole,” Stefan remarks, defensively. He knows Colin’s scurrilous remarks aren’t depictions of his sincere opinions, because nothing ever is, but it still manages to irk him. 

 

“You tell yourself that,” Colin simpers, “all I’m saying is that civilisation is inherently capitalistic and they don’t have rules to play by. When they do and they don’t work out, they devise new ones. Look at _Goldman Sachs_.”

 

Colin has certain fixations that always arise in any argumentation he proposes and Stefan has heard the name ever so often, always uttered with such raw dread and rancour that makes him fear his own life. Not very often does he feel unease, but in moments where Colin’s elusiveness dissipates under the pressure of baleful loathing, shivers run up his spine. 

 

He’s not their leader, solely because they agreed not to appoint one. It’s for the best, Colin often says, a revolution is like a wave. Everyone is equal in the mass, because with too much power comes terror. To be a good fighter, you need an ulterior motive, deep-rooted suffering weighing on each breath. Not everyone’s born Che Guevara, so relying on trauma has to become a driving force. The drawback, according to Colin, is how pain breeds vengeance. 

 

Leadership, as far as Colin’s often twisted logic is concerned, exposes people to power, which is too tempting to give up once war is over. Power assuages grief, numbs the agony, turns victim to miscreant. The pent up anger and frustration is dangerous when unleashed, the will to avenge one’s own past overtaking the will to change the future for all. Colin can’t be a leader, because the last thing he wants is to see himself inevitably become a tyrant, abandoning all previous sense of idealism. It accounts for his mania of dying in the revolution, for the revolution. It isn’t as much ideological, as it is a preventive measure.

 

Even with said knowledge, Stefan can’t help but see him as such. Similarly, the other slavic guerrilleros, as Colin calls them reverently, are partial to the notion. It comes naturally with Colin’s charisma that he exudes so facilely as he walks down the abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, the stomping of his combat boots echoing like the beating of a war drum on a galley. Their determined hearts adjusted to his pace without much resistance. No one questions his unspoken leadership, because no one wants to, the action in its core fatuous. 

 

Colin, after all, is a born leader. He is the mastermind behind their operations, knowledgeable as it gets of the mechanisms of urban guerilla. He knows the right people, ones Stefan is afraid to even ask names of. They are the ones that hack the local CCTV and grant them access to the deep web. They get him the guns, explosives, amounts of kerosene too suspicious to purchase at once at a gas station.Sometimes, he thinks of himself of somewhat of a right hand for Colin, moments like these when the others are gone and they’re alone. It’s merely an illusion, though, the realisation striking whenever Stefan tries to wrap his mind around what it actually takes to organise sabotages, let alone the more grandiose plans Colin speaks of in regards to their future. The real shit is taken care of behind the scenes, where Stefan isn’t as much of a key player as Colin deludes him.

 

It isn’t the man’s intention to trick him into loyalty or attachment, because Colin knows the pursuit of power, or the illusion of such, isn’t what keeps Stefan by his side. If anything, it’s awe, because no matter how much he likes to deny it, excusing Colin’s fraudulent façade as naive pretend play, he’s never met anyone quite like him before. Colin, in all his philosophical pomposity, is intelligent, charming, somewhat of a prodigy. Stefan couldn’t leave him, not because he’s conditioned to do so, but because there’s not much more to life than being with Colin, whether in combat or by his side like this, in the quiet of the night, fixing Molotov cocktails as means of killing time until sunrise. 

 

He doesn’t know which analogy fits their disarray of a relationship better. At times, Stefan reckons he’s Aleida March, watching Che Guevara flaunt his genius. Other times, when Colin is more morose in his disquisitions, focusing more on his cockeyed philosophy than boosting morale, he feels as though he is Saint John soaking in Christ’s teaching, cognisant of the depth of his words. Colin doesn’t like to be compared to either.

 

When Stefan brings it up, he laughs, “both of them are oblivious. Bastards. Assholes.”

 

“How so?”

 

“You know what’s similar about them? They both preach love. Love as the driving force of the revolution. Given, Che was more brutal about it, but the image of him is less distorted than the one of Jesus. Tell our girls, risking their lives to fight for their freedom that the driving force is love. Tell the men we keep on smuggling from Chechen camps that our driving force is love. Love, equality, it comes later. We fight here, our driving force is the fight in its own.”

 

Colin, being the pragmatic sort he is, hates to speak of empty values as such. He told Stefan before that a real revolutionary has no family, because it’s selfish to leave people behind. A real revolutionary dies in combat, the outcome is inevitable. Nights like this, water dropping from the ceiling into a puddle nearby, Stefan asks him if it’s really worth it, a loveless fight. Colin nods his head indignantly, “I don’t care for the future for myself. It’s selfish. Once I set fire to the Kremlin, I’ll be the first to throw myself in it and burn, I’m tellin’ ya.”

 

_Hypocrite_ , Stefan thinks to himself when Colin presses him against the wall, cold brick scratching his neck. _Hypocrite_ , he laughs as Colin presses his lips to his jaw, then behind his earlobe. _Hyprocrite,_ he realises, not so much trapped in Colin’s arms as he is at home. _Hypocrite,_ because Colin can’t get enough of Stefan, just as Stefan can’t get enough of him. _Hypocrite,_ he brushes the hair teasing Colin’s eyes with a fond smile, still face illuminated by the rising sun instead of the faint moonlight of before.

 

It is okay though, justifiable in the least. Colin won’t have to leave anyone behind, they both know Stefan will follow him right into the fire. 

**Author's Note:**

> again, never liked that communism thing. dont do it. go to med school and dont go on a biking trip across south america. it is just a leftist rant bcoz all leftists do is rant. not that id know. bye 
> 
> [buy me a ko-fi <3](http://ko-fi.com/joonswig) (see i like money bcoz i support capitalism only btw)


End file.
